MOB - why not launch life-raft?

Poey50

Poey50

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Although my wife loves me well enough, and we have a lot of safety kit, and we've practiced with it, I basically assume - no disrespect to her - that if I go overboard I am already dead, unless conditions are fairly light.

But it occurs to me that launching the life-raft (which lives on the pushpit) might offer a better chance of survival. The odd thing is I've never seen that recommended. Is there any reason why this isn't obvious? (Assuming the boat has an easy to deploy one.)
 
I suspect you are being far too pessimistic; practice MoB recoveries at least twice a year and one can often get it down to a tee. And with the new AIS beacons which alert the mother ship (DSC alarm and then steer back to casualty) the chances of a successful recovery are very high -- once it has been properly drilled that is.

Re your liferaft idea: good idea in principle but probably slow. Here is a tailor made alternative:
https://www.oceansafety.com/sectors/charter/product/jonbuoy-recovery-module
 
Good idea. Always be aware of it as an option. Whether you use it probably depends on circumstances, but it clearly makes sense as a last resort.

(I recommended this on my courses, but like you I hadn't heard it recommended before - doesn't seem to be part of the 'standard' RYA teaching.)
 
It's quite often recommended as a possible means to help get someone on board once you've got back to them.

I suppose the reason it's not normally suggested as an immediate action is that with the traditional location of the raft lashed down on the coachroof, you wouldn't be able to get it in the water before the boat had moved much too far from the MOB. If your pushpit launch is almost instant then it could be an option.

Pete
 
Poey50 said:
Although my wife loves me well enough, and we have a lot of safety kit, and we've practiced with it, I basically assume - no disrespect to her - that if I go overboard I am already dead, unless conditions are fairly light.
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I guess it depends where you sail. We sail in the Med and if I fell overboard I intend to stick around for a good few hours. Plenty of time for another boat to pootle past! :)

Richard
 
It is often suggested as a possibility. However, unoccupied liferafts are not easy things to control in any sea or wind, nor are they necessarily easy to board. As suggested there are other aids that are more appropriate for a single person overboard.
 
How does the liferaft get to the casualty?

How does an unconscious casualty get in the liferaft?

How does a casualty with a trauma injury get into the liferaft?

How does the casualty get from the liferaft back onboard?

What do you do with the liferaft once you have the casualty back onboard?

It is one of the tools in the box, but there are far more practical ways of getting a casualty onboard. My all time nightmare is: short handed, a horrible sea, an unconscious casualty with a complex fracture.

Having dealt with that sort of guilty on a mountain at sea it is going to be teen times more difficult.
 
My immediate thought was that it would encourage the MOB to use all his/her energy to swim to it, all the time it might be blowing away from them.

My recollection is that if you can get back near the MOB, but are not able to get them on board, it's best to throw a lifebelt and danbuoy so you can see them for the next pass.
 
dom said:
I suspect you are being far too pessimistic; practice MoB recoveries at least twice a year and one can often get it down to a tee. And with the new AIS beacons which alert the mother ship (DSC alarm and then steer back to casualty) the chances of a successful recovery are very high -- once it has been properly drilled that is.

Re your liferaft idea: good idea in principle but probably slow. Here is a tailor made alternative:
https://www.oceansafety.com/sectors/charter/product/jonbuoy-recovery-module
Click to expand...

The issue of getting back to the casualty is one that can easily be tackled with practice.

Getting that casualty back onboard a modern high freeboard yacht can't. That needs a system in place to enable the weakest to lift the heaviest. Our main sheet easily unclips from the traveller and can be led to a primary winch. Uncomfortable but in place all the time and plenty of grunt.
 
Tranona said:
It is often suggested as a possibility. However, unoccupied liferafts are not easy things to control in any sea or wind, nor are they necessarily easy to board. As suggested there are other aids that are more appropriate for a single person overboard.
Click to expand...

They may not be much of an aid to someone in the water (which is worth remembering if a liferaft forms one's Plan B for anything) but they might nake useful visual markers to hold on to. I don't have one, but my standing instructions to my crew, should I go overboard, are to release the dinghy and throw anything that floats - cushions, fenders and so on - after me, to form an easily spotted debris trail.

MOB practices are doubtless very heart warming, but I very much doubt that playing around with a fender on a nice day is the slightest bit of use. Wanna check your crew's skills? Throw a bucket overboard at 2am on a nasty night, hide away until they notice and then see how long it takes them to find the bucket again, if they ever do.
 
jac said:
Getting that casualty back onboard a modern high freeboard yacht can't. That needs a system in place to enable the weakest to lift the heaviest. Our main sheet easily unclips from the traveller and can be led to a primary winch. Uncomfortable but in place all the time and plenty of grunt.
Click to expand...

As I have said before, my safety briefing goes like this "This is a safety harness. If you use it correctly it will probably stop you from going overboard. It is also a lifejacket, which means that if you do go overboard there is an increased chance that your body will be recovered."

The magazines have been advertising and reviewing schemes and devises for retrieving people from the water for decades. None of them are even vaguely convincing. If you don't have a low platform, a crane and at least two hefty people available, à la RNLI, it's not going to happen.
 
I always advised sailing students to remember the option of launching the liferaft to assist someone in the water. The idea is to only launch it once you are back near to the person and then always keep it tied to your boat. It is often easier to board a liferaft from the water than the main vessel. We played games to prove it on occasions
.
Remember that a man overboard for real is very very rare. In fact, in over 40,000miles of taking crews sailing I never had a man overboard. The most frequent problem was people falling into the water from marina pontoons.
 
JumbleDuck said:
As I have said before, my safety briefing goes like this "This is a safety harness. If you use it correctly it will probably stop you from going overboard. It is also a lifejacket, which means that if you do go overboard there is an increased chance that your body will be recovered."
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That cheery summary pretty much matches my view. I tell myself that the deck is the top of a twenty storey block of flats and best not to leave it..

Mind you that Jonbuoy does look simple and quick enough to give me a chance.
 
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In my sea survival course it was suggested that you return to the MOB and then deploy the raft as a means of assisting them to get back aboard. And in extremis, they can stay in the raft until help arrives, if you can't do the transfer to the boat.

Don't underestimate just how hard/dangerous it is to get a fully clothed person from the water onto the boat in rough seas. Life rafts are designed to be boarded from the water.
 
If, as skipper, you consider the liferaft to be the best equipment to deploy giving the best chance of recovering the MOB then yeah, use it. Not as a matter of standard routine though, there is better, more specialised kit you could / should use before it comes to that.

Stating the obvious really :) Plus, even if your attempted recovery of MOB is unsuccessful, using the liferaft will still leave you a few hundred quid out of pocket :(
 
Poey50 said:
That cheery summary pretty much matches my view. I tell myself that the deck is the top of a twenty storey block of flats and best not to leave it..
Click to expand...

My other half does not like sailing because she views being at sea very differently from me. I see it as three feet down to something soft; she sees it as three hundred feet down to something hard.
 
Kelpie said:
In my sea survival course it was suggested that you return to the MOB and then deploy the raft as a means of assisting them to get back aboard. And in extremis, they can stay in the raft until help arrives, if you can't do the transfer to the boat.

Don't underestimate just how hard/dangerous it is to get a fully clothed person from the water onto the boat in rough seas. Life rafts are designed to be boarded from the water.
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In practice they are still difficult to board, although there have been recent improvements based on experience.

It was my experience of the difficulty of boarding and the horrible environment inside that convinced me to do everything possible to avoid the need to take to a raft. To my mind that is the best lesson you learn from a survival course.
 
Tranona said:
It is often suggested as a possibility. However, unoccupied liferafts are not easy things to control in any sea or wind, nor are they necessarily easy to board. As suggested there are other aids that are more appropriate for a single person overboard.
Click to expand...

....also worth remembering that not all rafts are self-righting and upside down they will blow around all over the place. Even the self righting ones with ballast bags full will skitter around a lot until the drogue is manually deployed. Michael Phelps could probably catch the thing, but I'm not so sure about the rest of us. I'd personally go for a standardised pre-rehearsed system that is known to work.
 
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